Why I teach: Tim Heumann

I am a middle school science teacher, and this year I decided to do something different. One morning, while in the shower, I had an idea. "Why not have the students in my eighth-grade science classes make a quilt? We could do the Periodic Table of the Elements!" I had no idea how to make a quilt, but many hours and over one hundred quilt squares later, the quilt is done. Each year, I need to give myself something new, something fresh. As I look to new projects, I hope that I will teach my students something through my efforts to stay viable in my classroom. — Tim Heumann, Joel P. Jensen Middle School